Ramadan began almost three weeks ago, and hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world are now spending the long summer days abstaining from food and drink. Even water is forbidden from dawn to dusk for observers of the fast.

Maharashtra will be the 18th state in India to ban single-use disposable plastic. So we aren't the first, but surely, we should be very proud that we are from those very few that have taken this ban seriously.

Being close to America is sort of like having the world's lousiest friend. In the ordinary course of business, it belittles you, ignores you, takes you for granted. When it needs you, when it's in the middle of an emergency, it shows up expecting you to drop everything. Then, the moment it has what it wants, it forgets you ever existed.

The BJP is hoping to capitalise on Modi-versus-the-rest as one man takes on the disparate group of parties - what the BJP calls a "corrupt khichri" - but as the incumbent, PM Modi can't really seem to convince the voters, as recent results reveal.

Four years ago this week, Narendra Modi was sworn in as India's prime minister amid the kind of excitement and expectation not seen in decades. Not for 30 years had a single party won an electoral majority.

While the nation's attention has been riveted on the Modi-Shah shenanigans in Karnataka, inadequate attention has been paid to the excesses they are committing at the other end of the country in the North-East where a massive public agitation has been spurred by the proposed amendment to the Citizenship Act of 1955 aimed, in effect, at providing no...

In my blog dated April 28, 2018, I had pointed out that the government was planning to introduce a chip in TV setup boxes to ostensibly monitor viewer preferences while watching TV programs. I had pointed out that this could also be a sinister design to invade the privacy of our homes and collect information about us without our knowledge or consen...

That would be Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the serial corporate founder, rocket entrepreneur, would-be colonizer of distant planets, variously toiling to save humanity and, as summarized by Steven Mufson in these pages, "tireless salesman and visionary" - to which we should now add "shameless old-style corporate grabber."

Prime Minister Narendra Modi completes four years in office on May 26. He's used the time to give India its biggest tax reform, overhauled a century-old bankruptcy law, revived stalled projects and got the World Bank to say Asia's No. 3 economy is a much better place to do business.

As my timeline explodes with the adrenaline from all the weights that are being lifted and push-ups being thrust by the bold and the beautiful, I think back to the time when the first International Yoga Day was marked in 2015. At that time, I'd reported on all the government excitement and build-up; afterwards, I was in Istanbul for a break when I ...

Amit Shah did the impossible yesterday: he got the entire spectrum of opposition together, indulging in a public display of affection and unity at the swearing-in of H D Kumaraswamy as the Chief Minister of Karnataka.

The opposition has just shown a semblance of unity at the swearing in ceremony of H D Kumaraswamy. It has miles to go before it crystallises into some kind of a formal structure. But Hindutva supporters are already jittery. Their reaction on social media is unprintable. They are bitter, angry and resorting to all kinds of abuses.

A humble (but not humbled) Congress, in the congenial company of a broad alliance holding aloft the Idea of India, will, a year from now, stop the perverse rise of an alternative Idea of India that we have witnessed since 2014, notwithstanding the obvious truth that well over two-thirds of all Indians have never wished to have anything to do with t...